One State. Simple

Ew AI slop

What do you mean my that? Like, your own posts or those of others?

Not sure I’m seeing that on my side. Could be wrong tho

Sync for Lemmy feels just like Reddit is Fun (RiF). So good

Let’s go!

I’m shocked, really

Think of instances like Discord servers. Then each instance has communities that are like Discord channels.

Another way to think of instances is like email providers: you can select Google or @Gmail, Microsoft or @Live, etc. The same is true for the fediverse, where you can make Lemmy.World your “provider” of Lemmy content, etc. Each community in this analogy might be folders or labels you apply to your emails so you can sort them efficiently.

What’s cool about the fediverse though is that no matter which instance you sign up to, you can see the content from communities of other instances as well. So if you have an account on Lemmy.World, you can see content from my instance, dbzer0, and all other instances.

Well, sometimes. Each instance allows federated relations in which posts, comments, upvotes, etc. are only shared between other federated instances if both the sending and receiving instances agree to that channel of information flow. If say Lemmy.World doesn’t allow that information flow but dbzer0 does, then Lemmy.World won’t see any data from dbzer0 while dbzer0 will see all data from Lemmy.World.

Think if someone posts a meme on Lemmy.World, if L.W federates with db0 and vice versa, Lemmings can see comments and upvotes from both servers to that meme post. If L.W. defederates but db0 doesn’t, then L.W doesn’t see db0 comments/upvotes but db0 sees L.W’s and db0’s. Also, db0 can respond/upvote L.W. users, but L.W. users won’t see that data. Then if both L.W and db0 defederate from each other, neither instance sees content from each other, effectively blocking the entire instances from each other.

Federation is 2-sided. Both parties must agree to information flow in order to interact.

Defederation is 1-sided or 2-sided. If 1-sided, one party sees nothing from the other, while the other party sends data that will never be seen. Kinda pointless! If 2-sided, neither party sees anything and so they don’t interact at all.

Hope that helps! Federation is an amazing tool when dealing with issues like xenophobia/racism and corporate shills like Meta’s Threads trying to take over the FediVerse.

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome! I’ll leave this comment explaining Lemmy that I’ve previously left for new users:

Welcome to Lemmy! I’m glad you joined. There are tons of tutorials out there for how to use the platform, but if it helps, here’s my advice:

I use the Android app Sync For Lemmy. Reminds me a lot of rif is fun from before Reddit shut down 3rd party API access about a year ago.

Lemmy.World is the name of the biggest instance on Lemmy. Think of it as a discord channel with different sub-channels except those are called communities here (and instead of r/ for subreddits we have c/ for communities).

There are still trolls here. What’s nice about Lemmy is that you can block individual trolls, communities of trolls, or even instances of trolls (if you deem them so). Conversely, if you get banned from any of the above, you can make a new account on any other instance (like dbzer0 or shitjustworks) and still have access to the content from those people/places. The same is true if certain communities/instances change their policies on things like Luigi, which happened on Lemmy.World recently. I switched over to dbzer0 to avoid that censorship and to also see stuff about pirating - that which is banned on Lemmy.World.

Lastly, we can see posts/comments from other people on the Fediverse, like from Mastodon (Twitter alternative) and others.

Hope you enjoy your stay here! Lemmy is primarily tech- and politics-focused rn, but a lot of people draw parallels to Reddit’s early days, which is good!

Yeah. I’m a vegan and I took issue with that. Sure we can do scientific studies to see how cats do on vegan diets, but imo that further propels cat domestication which vegans should be against at the very beginning. We already subject cats and other pets to environments that aren’t natural to their genetic history. And now vegans are introducing foods that aren’t natural, even though taking cats off streets can be seen as the more ethical thing to do, given the alternatives.

Lots of nuance here, but it’s not fair to the cats. Any time vegans think for themselves instead of the real victims of animal slavery, they undermine their entire cause.

Damn Sunshine, you’ve been popping off on content. Formally, thank you 🙏

AURA

This is true of Markdown though, no? Which Obsidian runs?

Friedrich Nietzsche had a lot to say about this.

Suffering is part of what gives life meaning. If you don’t know how hard it can get, you don’t know how good it can get as well. And there’s good suffering out there. Physical exercise, challenging yourself, testing your potential to see what you can actualize are all sufficient things to do in this life. You don’t know what you can do until you try to do it.

Then you have to consider things like morality and knowledge.

We humans (and specifically old, white humans) tend to subject others to a certain kind of suffering through the patriarchy. That’s not right. Every human should have a chance to live a good life in contrast to suffering. And the ethical pursuit of morality doesn’t have to stop with our specific species of life. Humans also subject hundreds of other biological species to a life of slavery, torture, and death. It is a noble cause to bring freedom to those species, just as it is to bring freedom to Palestinians or Ukrainians or Hong Kongers. Their potential is limited by human made constructs which can just as easily be deconstructed.

Also, the universe is infinite (as far as we can tell). There are many machinations ongoing that cause certain events to happen. Why? Why was my local village destroyed by a rock flying in from space? Why is my town in Texas experiencing freezing temperatures when that’s never occurred before? How long do I have to get to higher ground until the tsunami that earthquake caused reaches the coast? It’s in our interest to learn about the natural world due to the hazards it brings to our lives, of which reality could end prematurely. Humans are also curious. Why is our universe the way it is? Why can’t we live in a 4D reality? Can we even grasp reality? How do I know something caused something else? How confident can we be in those judgements?

The human condition since The Enlightenment has meant we’ve shifted our epistemological focus away from us towards the greater world around us. If we no longer have an Almighty God which has all the answers and tells us what’s good and ill, who does that now? We do!

God is dead. But morality, knowledge, and the good life of flourishing are not.

I love that movie!!!

Hell yeah! Consider sticking around for a bit. Don’t forget that you have the power to block individuals, communities, and even entire instances if you’re having a bad time. Not sure if reddit gives you all that power, but it has its uses!

See, I learned this in Spanish class in my American high school, and I don’t think that linguistic fact stuck with me! Thanks

Having the ability to export your account data (say to a CSV) might be useful for this reason.

If you want to move to a new instance, you can pack your bags and head out.

You can probably imagine how this won’t be a 1:1 transition, however, because the new instance might not have the same communities as the old instance. I commented on another thread about how it would be cool if Lemmy took your communities list, looked at how those communities federate for instance (or just do a word search on the new instance with names of the communities of the old instance), and serve you suggested new communities to subscribe to.

And if you can export your data, then there’s no need to store it in a centralized way to make these types of actions doable, which favors privacy.

And it’s not like exporting your subs to a CSV file or something to then upload to your new account on your new instance will work. Different instances will have different communities, so it won’t be a 1:1 transition.

I can definitely see the friction for new users if this happens.

We all know people are lazy, so if the friction proposed by Lemmy is more of a burden compared to the inconvenience proposed by Reddit or another social media platform, then people won’t change.

It would be interesting if there could be some tool that proposes similar communities on the instance you’re joining based on the communities you were subscribed to in your previous instance. Community federation could allow for that linked list that could be reverse searched and served to a user, precluded by uploading a CSV file of your previous communities so you don’t have to keep track of individual users in a server somewhere (which is anti-privacy anyways, and Lemmy imho is pro-privacy).